AICE MEDIA STUDIES DS - 1

 FINALE - SUMMARY Overall the process of making a film was interesting. We began with a plan that was abruptly changed constantly throughout the film process. My teams creative nature helped us achieve the end goal of a spectacular film in an efficient amount of time. As an actor and editor of the film that didn't limit my role on the team. I had my fair share of participating in everyones role which helped bring the ideal film come to life. But when I had my teams back they had mine. The director made sure everything was completed on time whereas the cinematographer helped by recording hard chess scenes and bringing her vibrant ideas. This collaborative effort helped us develop a great film with deep meaning. Our film was originally going to be about a competition for a job position but that changed into a horror/drama on a woman being killed by her lover. As the chess game goes on the victim keeps making bad moves referencing back to her bad decisions in real life.  The films the

 2ND DAY EDITING - CLIP ARRANGMENT Today I went through and edited all of the clips together. This took me around 2 hours to put the clips together and add transitions. While doing this I made quick cuts switching from chess move to reality which enforced the theme that the chess moves are in charge of the reality the victim is living in. But before doing that the intro had to be made. The first clip was the bird running across the ground away from the other birds. This represents the emptiness and cold hearted killer  The next clip is a spray painted barrel saying look at the roof which transitions into a metal crate with hand prints and hearts on it.  Then finally the chess board is seen and quickly zoomed in onto with a cut into the feet of the victim running. Next the clip shows the killer playing the knight as his first play and cuts into the victim running from a POV shot.  As the doubleganger moves her pawn the killer takes a step towards the victim and she continues running. Th

 3RD DAY EDITING -  SOUND AND MUSIC The film was instructed to have no dialogue, so I had to find the right music and sound effects to create diegetic and non diegetic sound so the film wouldn't be silent. In the beginning I was able to find birds chirping which was completely diegetic and gave the film a more grunge feel. While the victim was running her footsteps were used which gave the film more realism. Lastly the sound that came from the killer grabbing the metal crate was natural aswell.   After using purely diegetic sounds, I found gun shot sound effects to use at the end of the film when the killer shoots at the victim. Also I had to add a sound effect for the last transition which was like an ethereal glitch sound that just sounded cool so I added it to the film.  The last thing I did was find audio that matched the vibe of the film. The song that came to my head was My Man from Billie Holiday. Her old school love story on her man and her saying "it costs me life&quo

 1ST DAY EDITING - REVIEW CLIPS After all the clips were made the team left me to finish all the editing. But rather than rushing into it I decided to go through all the clips and label which ones I was going to use and discard the ones that I wasn't even going to watch over. This was difficult due to it being our cinematographer's first time holding a camera so a lot of the clips were random shots of her fingers. But after a long night of review the clips were finally in order and organized so I could just drag and drop them into the editing app.  Now deciding the app was difficult. My strong suit was Final Cut Pro but my teacher insisted on using Adobe Rush. Now Rush was a quicker edit and would get the job done in less time. But I've never used it before. Final Cut would make the edits more precise due to me having all my transitions and effects on there. But this would take longer to edit.  Subsequently, I chose Final Cut Pro because I have more experience on the platfo

 RECORDING DAY 3: On day 3 my team decided to record but as the editor I felt as if we had all the shots we needed. Our original victim had came back but she wasn't wearing red so I didn't feel the need to include her due to her attire throwing off one of the themes of red.  But they insisted so I went with the flow and recorded the extra clips. They went thorough recording the same running scenes over alongside the chess scenes but on the second time we ran into a lot of errors trying to mimic the scenes we created the first time without a shot log being created by the cinematographer . The 3rd day was rough but the shots got done. Even though I didn't end up using the clips its always good to have extra just in case something would've happened to the original ones

 RECORDING THE SECOND DAY: On the second day of recording we ran into a major issue. The main victim who was supposed to play chess ended up not showing up.  Due to this we had to use a doubleganger of the main victim and hid her face alongside the killer. Even though it was a quick fix the addition of the doubleganger changed the whole narrative of the movie. Someone else was playing chess with the killer that determined the outcome of her life. The victim is like a puppet while the killer and mysterious chess player are the puppeteers. This new narrative makes a new theme just displaying the whole corruption of the world in simpler terms. The doubleganger is seen only moving pawns while the killer is making major moves to quickly kill and destroy the victim.  The world is operating on an adhock system of trades, wealth, military force, and social custom based politics. The things that average civilians aren't able to control which is shown as the doublganger and killer are the on

 RECORDING DAY: After the casting we went straight into recording the running scenes but at this point of the film we were un aware of where the script was so we began to freestyle the different shots and camera angles. The first shot taken was a master shot to show the main character running across the frame.This shot was able to be done in one take so due there being a time limit we immediately went to the next shot. The next shot  was a long shot with a gradual zoom in on the victim running.  After that we just kept recording the victim from different angles and finally started recording the Killers scenes. The killers scenes were shot at dutch angles and extreme closeups at different parts of his body to keep his identity hidden.  We started at just recording his feet to recording his fingers and eventually having his whole head in the shot but only with a mask on. The last few scenes of the killer were just his shadow and below the waist shots to show his attire. But in the shadow

CASTING The same day as the creation of the script our team had to find actors that can fill in the roles of the imaginary characters created. But there was sadly limits to the choices we could make. Some of our possible actors had poor grades and overall just wouldn't be able to leave class the days of our planned recording.  Due to this factor we slimmed our characters down to 4 possible canidates. One of them being me.   As the editor of the film I already established in my brain how i wanted the characters to be developed so acting in my own film was a smart decision and overall helped our team in the long run. Now for the other characters we needed a victim and a chess player.  We decided these two by having each character perform a run. The run was going to show which actor was the most realistic at acting scared while running. Out of the three we went with the last two due to them wearing red which was the uniform the characters were supposed to come in and the first runner

 SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT  So on Novemeber 18th, 2022 we decided to fully finish our script  *which was later destroyed during production :(  Script:  Shot 1)  Tracking Shot of victim "Alex" running that would continuously get covered and move closer to her face Shot 2)  transition into an establishing shot of the chess board then the Murder will aggressively move a chess piece Shot 3) Show a close up of the killer Shot 4) Cut into the player playing chess being nervous and tilt down towards their move and transition up into another running scene Shot 5) Running scene Shot 6) Killer's wife laughing over killers shoulders Shot 7 ) Shows killer taking a step Shot 8) Show runners face while running  Shot 9) Killer peaking behind the metal crate to see runner running. Shot 10) Alex looks behind her and doesn't see the killer Shot 11) Alex turn into a dead end and a shadow appears behind her Shot 12) chess piece falls and she loses Shot 13) Credits This was used as a rough draft

  NEW PLOT After scouting the locations our team decided to scrap the entire plot we initially made alongisde the genre and began the evolution of "Check Mate".  In our new film Check Mate our main character Alex, is playing a psychological game of chess against her soon to be murder. Every move she makes on the chess board represents her moves in her subsequent reality. As the game gets closer to the end, Alex's chess skills are exposed as the murder gets checkmate on her within only a couple of moves. As this occurs Alex is shown running into a dead end representing her being out of moves.  Our new plot has a general theme that every move that you make in life matters. This is displayed through the plays on the board and the moves in her real life.